Each subtheme delves into a different water-related topic and highlights the most important issues. For the subtheme Community Engagement and Inter-sectoral Communication, the following focus points are highlighted.
- Building awareness and trust among communities, inclusive decision-making on future climate risks and ecosystem processes
- Water (re)allocation: finding common ground for robust water distribution
- Smart data tools for data-driven community engagement
Threading through all the other three sub-themes requires continuous community and stakeholder engagement at all decision levels. Building awareness, capacity strengthening, and inclusion of data-driven and innovative solutions can help build trust among the stakeholders, communities, organizations and youth organizations. Future climate risks, degrading environment and natural processes require a collaborative and integrated approach. Consumer-centric infrastructural and systemic solutions for example in water pricing and tariff settings can be a step forward, to begin with. Inclusive decision-making processes and management can be a step forward in bridging the gap between decisions and implementations, policymakers and communities, and expected outcomes vis-as-vis actual results.
Water distribution systems especially in times of drought, trade-offs between competing sectors and political priorities often lead to water supply and access issues. Water re-allocation mechanisms triggered by stakeholder-led decision processes can provide a common ground for building trust as well as building robust and flexible integrated solutions. Water pricing and Smart data tools for data-led planning and strategies can provide the necessary trigger in fostering collaboration between sectors and at multi-levels.